Support for Georgia

Eastern Europeans in Britain displayed a united front in support of Georgia as Russia continues to occupy large parts of Georgian territory in defiance of international pressure, bringing hardship to thousands of Georgian civilians.


Many Georgians in Britain are worried about their relatives and friends facing the conflict in Georgia. ‘There is panic outside the capital Tbilisi’, said George Gazdeliani, a Georgian living in London. Georgian Keti Kalandadze remarked, ‘Every day we receive emails from our friends in Georgia describing difficult situations caused by the conflict’. According to the UN refugee agency estimates, the conflict has displaced around 100,000 people from their homes.


Around seven hundred people gathered in front of British parliament buildings on Saturday, as a show of support for Georgia, chanting ‘Russian troops out’. Gazdeliani said, ‘We came here to demonstrate. We want peace in our country.’ The remark was echoed by the oldest Georgian in the crowd, hundred year old Alexander Bestavachvili. He came with his wife and family to give his message, ‘Georgians want good neighbours.’


The crowds sported flags of Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Chechnya, Poland, Slovenia and Ukraine. The former members of USSR were alarmed at Russia’s attack on Georgia. One of the loudest voices urging the Russian troops to move out of Georgia was Ukranian Svitlana Prihno’s. ‘We have been independent for seventeen years now. Russia finds it hard to accept this,’ she said. ‘We don’t want Russians in Georgian territory. If she is not stopped now Russia will attack Ukraine next.’


The demonstration was part of a series of events held to push the British government into adopting a more serious diplomatic response to the crisis. ‘There have been strong words from the British government. But the Russians don’t understand strong words. The solution lies in a stronger diplomatic mission,’ said local guy Roger McCann.


McCann showed up for the demonstration in solidarity with the sufferings of the Georgian people. ‘I was in Moscow when Russia banned Georgian wine. Georgian wine is world-famous. That was shocking for me. Even the Russians were surprised.’ McCann visits Georgia every year to teach Georgian students management and marketing.









The sense of solidarity with Georgia seemed palpable among the demonstrators. ‘We share the same destiny’, pointed out Zita Cepaite, Editor of Infozona, a weekly Lithuanian newspaper published in UK. ‘Twenty years ago something similar happened in Lithuania when we were struggling for our independence. Russian troops came with their tanks to the surrounding areas of the capital Vilnius. I cannot forget those days. The only difference is that Lithuania handled the Russian provocation differently. We somehow got out of the situation.’


‘Russians have to keep their troops within their country, not with others,’ stressed Alan Kmadzm from Chechnya wryly. He held a Chechnyan flag as he shouted, ‘Russian troops out.’ Chechnya has been in continued conflict with Russia for the past several years.


‘I am not pessimistic, but one has to be cautious. Russia is a big and unpredictable country’, remarked Cepaite.


Meanwhile, the Georgians chanted ‘My country, why are you so sad?’ a poem written by national hero Ilia Chavchavadze. Bells rang in the background as protestors waved a flag with ‘Peace’ written on it.


‘Support Georgia,’ Telewizja Polska journalist Marcin Antosiewicz unabashedly proposed to a fellow journalist covering the demonstration. ‘I think it is important. It is not just a problem between Russia and Georgia but a problem with Russia. It is a power game.’

A lone French flag rose from the largely eastern European protestors. ‘I think Sarkozy did the right thing. He basically asked them to stop,’ mused Sofiane Mihoub, a French man living in UK. France, which assumed the E.U. presidency for a six month period, was successful in brokering a ceasefire between Russia and Georgia. But Russia continues to occupy Georgian territory in defiance of the ceasefire agreement.


Georgians are looking towards US and Britain for support in the present crisis. ‘It will make Russia think twice if they show support for Georgia,’ believes Andzej Maria Borkowski from Poland. In his visit to Britain last year Georgian President Mikhail Saakashveli had described UK as an ‘important supporter’ of his country’s ambition to NATO membership. Britain’s foreign secretary, David Milliband, is due to travel to Georgia later this week to meet Saakashveli.

AN AMSTERDAM STORY!

Lo and behold, there comes a rainy day and you are indoors sitting cosily in one of the cafés lining Amsterdam's narrow grey streets talking to enlightened people – read, international journalists. You naively reveal you are a religious person and you think your religious values have a place in the Habermasean public sphere of rational democratic dialogue. For sure, before long, you end up wishing you hadn't believed in the citizen's right to freedom of expression. The reaction to your argument is similar to canned peas, one exactly the same as the other. First, there is some embarrassment, some slight shaking of the head from side to side which leaves you in doubt as to whether it is in agreement to what you said or not. Then you receive unspoken messages, and some not-so-unspoken ones. Chill, baby. Take it easy. We do want no fanatics here.


I chilled till my lips froze at the mention of religion. Of course, as a journalsim student I know that the media world over has harped onto associating religion with conflict and terrorism. But, I mused secretly to myself one day, what about the other end of the stick? If all religion in politics could be easily labeled as fanaticism, how could you explain Martin Luther King? Or Gandhi? Or Dorothy Day? The last one must have caught you off guard. Well, I added her because I 'mused' in front of a portrait hung up on the walls of the Catholic Worker House in Dantestraat, in the south of Amsterdam where I roam around, officially as a student, but unofficially as a curious tourist. It is a portrait of Gandhi, King and Day looking out piously from behind a plain glass framing.






An Israeli volunteer at the CW house. Portrait Behind: Gandhi and Dorothy Day



The Catholic Worker is a house of hospitality founded in the United States by the American journalist Dorothy Day who converted from communism to the Catholic religious faith just before the World War. The movement which, after Day's death, has no official headquarters or visible leader has spread to many countries in Europe. Each house is as unique as the other, for they all follow different ideals and activities, but most are centered around the idea of hospitality – its doors open to all irrespective of age, gender and religion. In Amsterdam the house welcomes new immigrants to Netherlands who have nowhere else to go and is located in two adjacent apartments in a not-so-rich suburbs of the city. Seventeen people live in this house, including a political Chrisitan anarchist and a not-so-political democrat. Cats roam around the library, occasionally leaping in between book shelves adorned with books on non-violence, anarchism, the Catholic faith and yes, Mahatma Gandhi.


Of course, an Indian is curious to know how Gandhi got in there. “Oh, that is quite easy. Im sure both Gandhi and Dorothy would say that we 'should live simply so that others can simply live'. Yeah, that's the ideal of this house,” said Gerard Moorman, who started the house in 1988. Well, I pointed out, there is this curious mixture of political activism and spiritual values as well in the Catholic Worker that Gandhi tried to live out in his life at the Sabarmati ashram.


The Catholic Worker house in Amsterdam is called Jeannette Noel Huis and now has three permanent adult members including Wibo Mes, Frits ter Kuile and his wife Aiyun. Like Gandhi, Frits integrates both his personal religious beliefs and political opinions. “When I was young I wanted to be a hero,” says Frits laughing heartily at himself. In the eighties, he gave up his studies in genetical engineering to live in the woods next to a NATO base near Woensdrecht, a village in the south of Netherlands to protest against NATO's decision to employ more nuclear weapons in Europe.




Frits (second from left) and gang at the Catholic Worker House, Amsterdam



“Being a Christian anrachist and pacifist who likes Tolstoy and Gandhi a lot, I felt very attracted to the Catholic Worker movement and joined the community in Amsterdam in 1996,” says Frits who now lives in the house with wife Aiyun and childern Jia Jia and Onno.


Political activities range from offering hospitatlity to illegal immigrants to non-violent protests at the deportation center in Schiphol airport where scores of immigrants “are incarcerated not because they did a criminal act, but because they lack papers. For many years, till they stopped allowing visitors, we also visited the prisoners, many of them from India,” says Frits.




Amsterdam Schiphol Airport Entrance







Behind the Barbed wires: Protests at the Schiphol airport deportation center



The protests at the deportation center has highly political and relgious roots. Anarchism is a deeply held political value in many Catholic Worker houses. For Christian anarchists like Frits, Gandhi's ideal of non-violent non-cooperation with the state is of ultimate importance. For, the core of this political ideology is the primacy of human freedom, where no coercive force by institutional hierarchy such as the government or monopoly capitalism has any place.


I visted the house several times to get to know the people. Once as I was talking to an Iranian political refugee staying at the house, he revealed that the government had not granted him a residence permit even after waiting for seven years. To my surprise Frits interrupted and remarked firmly, “He has a residence permit from God.”


This anarchism is supplemented by personalism or personal responsibility to care for the neighbour, “At the core of our works is Mathew 25 where Christ tells us that what we do to the least of our brothers and sisters, we do to Him,” points out Frits.


Inspired by philosophers such as Emmanuel Mounier and Jacques Maritain, the Catholic Worker protests nonviolently against the anti-immigration policies of the government and espouses the idea that the foreigner in the country is to be welcomed as Christ, and not treated as unwanted, imprisoned and deported as per the government's will. Dorothy Day remarked candidly in The Catholic Worker newspaper which she started in New York in the 1930s and which still sells at a penny a copy, “The problem of authority and freedom is one of the greatest problems of the day.” Gandhi's idea seemed to echo in Dorothy's life as she tried to live out her life according to these high ideals till the very end. “The oppressor can be overcome by spiritual values,” said Day.


I attended a few protests at the deportation center with Frits and gang, including nineteen year-old German Sophie Hinger who is a volunteer at the house for a year. “Wow”, I thought,”These people actually live out their Gandhian mixture of politics and spiritual values every single day of their lives.” The movement is amazing, adds Sophie who does not consider herself religious or an anarchist but admires the willingness of the Catholic Workers to take in immigrants into their own homes. This, especially so in a land where immigration laws have become tougher over the last few years.


For more on Dorothy Day, visit http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/photos.cfm

Britain's ex- Prime Minister Tony Blair has become a Catholic. What do you say about something like that? Go to confession and confess his sins along with yours, I guess. The BBC says today that he had given an interview to ITV1 channel here in Britain, saying he had 'prayed to God' before deciding to send the troops to Iraq. Ooops! We had a caricature of that kind of politics in George Bush, who has the support of many Christians in the U.S. (the Evangelicals). Now, is this scenario going to be repeated with a 'pro-Iraq War' Catholic too? Do you think all Catholics would be branded as 'right-wing' now, since we have an excellent Catholic model who might speak for all of us?




OUT OF OFFICE, BUT STILL A FACE OF THE IRAQ WAR
(Source: Internet)


I hope my dear liberal friends would have enough sense to go through Tony Blair's strained relationship with the Catholic Church ('Blair in Prickly Meeting at the Vatican') and the Catholic teachings (Abortion not a Poll Issue - Blair) before they jump in to proclaim anathema on all Catholics. Please BE AWARE of the fact that a man who could publicly oppose the then Pope John Paul II's very vocal criticisms of the war against Iraq, has no place as a spokesman for Catholics. Catholics, under the leadership of the Pope, has taken a moral stance on the Iraq war. And that stance is anti-war.

Moreover, he waited till he was out of office to convert. What does that say about his willingness to put his neck on the line? Everyone who has ever lived in the U.S. and U.K. know that these countries have an active anti-Catholic approach, both in politics and in the general media. It would have cost Blair a lot to be labelled 'Catholic' in British politics, which sorry to say, is not entirely 'secular'. Tony Blair himself admits that he didn't want to be labelled a 'nutter' (BBC).

I agree that it is a personal affair. I am happy someone has joined the Catholic Church. But that should not mean that everything he has done, including taking British troops to Iraq or his ambivalent stance on abortion, should be labelled as 'Catholic'. From my past experience with my 'liberal' friends, this is a scenario I can see developing. I hope someone in the Vatican speaks out before he is accepted as the Catholic face of the Millennium in Times magazine.

AIRPORT SECURITY!

(Photo Source:Internet)


I had flown in to London early morning from George Bush Intercontinental airport in Texas, a southern state in the U.S. The airport had a subdued aura with sleepy-eyed passengers making their way through the long queues at arrival. The 'citizens' - E.U. country members – had slightly lesser queues, while progress was slower in the ranks of the 'rest of the world'. An airport staff member moved back and forth giving orders in loud voices. It was deja vu. I closed my eyes claustrophobically. The lines in front of me strongly resembled the ration rice shops in my hometown Cochin where men and women turned up for their portion of government subsidised rice. At Bush and Gatwick it was not rice. It was security we were buying with the long queues. From bureaucratic and often unquestionable authorities. The day before, I had noticed with shock signboards at the George Bush Intercontinental airport in the U.S. that ran along these lines 'No arguments with airport security staff. You could be arrested if you do.' Bags, laptops, passports and even shoes went through the X-rays. The theme repeated itself at Gatwick where security personnel questioned everyone endlessly on their purpose of visit. The passengers looked tired, but did in mute resignation whatever was demanded of them. I wondered if anyone reflected on the degree of control the security staff seemed to project. What possibilities of additional signboards lay ahead in future if people did not question this seemingly unchallenged power? I remembered reading an article on BBC of how new surveillance technology could aid airport staff to “strip you bare without removing your clothes.” When would that be legitimised in U.K?

I finally got past the security and got into the arrival lounge at Gatwick, dumped my luggage in one corner of the airport seat and turned around to make a call. It was time to phone my friend and tell her to come pick me up. I shifted from my luggage a little as I chatted with my friend. A guy who was walking past me stopped and yelled, “Whose bag is this?'' I stopped midway through speaking to my friend and gestured to him that it was mine. He was not content to let it be and screamed at me, “You know you are not allowed to do this. You cannot leave your bag unattended.” I rolled my eyes and gave him a cold stare. He left me alone. But it set me thinking again. There were dos and don'ts and it seemed I had not yet mastered them. Why wouldn't he scream at me, I thought, it was obvious I was not to move even an inch away from my baggage. Weren't the airport security staff announcing continuously, “Please do not leave your baggage unatteneded”? It seemed I had almost committed a criminal offence, I mused in wonder. How had straying a few inches from your luggage become a criminal offence, shouting at fellow passengers become legitimate and machines that screened past your clothes become airport talk?

There was a lot in it that many would take as necessary precaution, I reminisced as I sat down next to my luggage. Airport security had become top priority for the Bush and Blair governments' 'war on terror'. Security in U.S and U.K. had been tight for a long time, even before 9/11. In the U.K. the IRA had set a pattern of terrorism that residents were familiar with. But the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York proved that the security provided had not been enough. More fear resulted in more perceptions of risk. The perception was that terrorism had made travel in U.S and U.K a risk. More proof was to come for those who wanted to see risk everywhere. The 7/7 attacks on London tubes and buses proved it. The failed car bombs at Glasgow airport in Scotland put another stamp on it. Many thus consider tightening of security at airports a necessary precaution to preventing future terrorist attacks. In fact, the U.S.A Today recently carried an article which showcased how a few of the 9/11 victims' families gathered to congratulate the airport security staff for their vigilance.

So what did the governments do? In the U.K. the Blair government dedicated thirty million pounds annually to tighten up the airport surveillance technology alone. The present prime minister Gordon Brown recently affirmed this policy, 'I think people will have to accept that the security has got to be more intense.' Technology has stepped up to meet the government's demands. The surveillance technology in most demand is biometrics – the technology to check your fingerprints, eyes and face to see if you are who you say you are. Metal detectors and x-ray technology are not sufficient anymore. News portals set off rumours about plans to install machines that could see through one's clothes. The argument was that it would prevent the necessity of actual physical searches. Another system of control is the CIA's bill of hit-list names were given to all security staff in the U.S. If your name resembles any of these, you can be assured that you will be screened more rigorously by the airport staff.

This pattern is comparable to what has been happening in Maldives for the last few months. The small group of islands off India was shocked by a bombing at the Sultan Park in its capital Male on September 29. As a result, the Maldivian government has tightened up security at the Male airport. My Dad who travels often to Maldives on business, had pointed out to me that it had made travel difficult. 'I've been coming here for the past 15 years and I have not seen such heavy security and questioning,' said Dad. 'But why not? If it guarantees my safety, I am willing to go through heavy security checks,' he had mentioned to me. Like my Dad, many think that the risk of terrorist attacks while travelling has to be dealt with tight security control at airports. Whether in the U.S, U.K or Maldives.

I found a parallel between what was happening in the U.S., U.K. and Maldivian airports and what I had read in a book called Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity by Ulrich Beck. The German author says that such heightened perception of risk was a condition of modernity. It is only in late modernity that people have become highly self-reflexive about possibilities of risk around them. Risk is perceived everywhere - in the environment (climate change), science (nuclear weapons), food consumption (bird flu, mad cow disease), sex (AIDS) and even breathing (SARS)!

I don't think that it was not that risk wasn't present in previous eras. But it was not expected of the whole society and its institutions to have much control over factors that brought risk. For example, in Indian philosophy, succumbing to risk was attributed to fate. Now with technological progress and more and more institutionalisation, risk societies, Beck mused, demanded various institutions and technologies to take the place of fate.

The casualities of such heightened perceptions of risk and institutions and technologies raised up to prevent it are many. The first casualty of this heightened perception of risk is humour. No one could anymore take a joke about planes crashing into high-rise buildings. In fact many travel websites, including one I had browsed for security tip details – airsafe.com – warned passenger that humour was not an option. 'Do not joke about having a bomb or firearm in your possession,' they cautioned. But other serious ones follow. In India, many friends complained to me about not getting past the radar. “We are not terrorists. We are just engineers. We need to go do our work in the U.S and U.K.,” they muttered in disbelief. The common man had become suspect.


(Queue at Gatwick
Photo Source: Internet)

As I looked at the lines of passengers behind me still in the long queues I was reminded of philosopher Michel Foucault. He would not have hesitated to describe the people as submitting to a strange post-French Revolution characteristic called 'governmentality'. It just means that you have given your given your government too much control. Virtual risk, as Beck would see the terrorist attacks since it is still not the most serious threat to British, American or Maldivian citizens, has led to the real risk of too much government monitoring and power to dictate normal day-to-day life. A sort of nanny state. In fact, the governments have succeeded in making its citizens believe that what the government demands from it is legitimate. The government has set the agenda of heightened perceptions of risk, and the people have merely followed the government's agenda.

But I had to admit that many do not agree wholeheartedly with the government's policies on airport security. A few among the crowd, such as the ones who expressed their comments on BBC's online news portal after it reported heightened airport security after the Glasgow bombings, did raise their protest. The few pointed out that the U.K. government was putting too much emphasis on airport security regulations instead of changing its 'evil' foreign policies and building bridges of peace with other countries. The other protesters, ironically include airports in U.K. who have to foot the bill of the 150 per cent increase in security spending after 9/11 due to increased restrictions and demands imposed by the government. Unlike U.S. and many other European countries, the chief financial burden of heightened security restrictions fall on the U.K airports, costing them 'almost a quarter of their income' and cutting out their profits.

But government control remains a part and parcel of life, unquestionable and bureaucratic. A recent proof of the U.K. government's power was the The Department for Transport announcing, inspite of legal threats from Ryan Air, Virgin Atlantic and other airlines, that it will not go back on its security regulations which were tightened again following the attempted attacks at Glasgow airport. Foucault and Beck seem to make sense, I thought as my friend came to pick me up. So much of what Beck said about modern man's attempt to gain more and more control over virtual possible risk seemed to be coming true in the case of airport security. But this heightened perception of risk has sadly led to a state of governmentality, as Foucault described it. Bureaucracy is the word, I confirmed in my mind, as I took up my bag and thankfully left the airport.

Take some time out to ensure you continue to receive your BBC Gaza news reports!

An Author and a Professor!

Being terribly fascinated with neo-conservatives, I, who normally like to curl up with my laptop and books at precisely 8 pm, decided to take my cycle and look for Leidsplein where Crea was organising a documentary show 'The Power of Nightmares'. I arrived late and found my way through a smoke-filled bar to a dingy room where the figure of Sayyid Qutb stared at me from the big screen. The docu, let me tell you, is a famous one, made by BBC journo Adam Curtis and draws a parallel between the rise of neo-conservatives in the US and radical Islamism in the Arab world.

So who is this Sayyid Qutb?

He was an Egyptian who belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood, a leading intellectual who wrote several books on radical Islamism (an ideology which states that Islam is not solely a religion but also a set of political ideologies which have to be played out in the political arena) which were to later inspire many, including Osama Bin Laden's mentor and Egyptian Islamic Jihad member Ayman Zawahiri.

Sayyid Qutb (Source: Internet)

The documentary traces Qutb's disillusionment with the sexual permissiveness and liberal ideas of the American society, where he studied for a short period of time. Returning back, he endured torture and finally murder for his radical ideas. Even torture could not change him, so he must have been pretty convinced about what he wrote!?



This religious fundamentalism is then shifted to the US, where almost simultaneously, another group of radicals were taking shape – neoconservatives – inspired by the ideas of Leo Strauss, a German-born Jewish philosopher who taught political science in the University of Chicago (sounds so innocent and harmless!)

Leo Strauss (Source: Internet)

So what was Leo Strauss teaching his devoted students?



He, like Qutb, says Curtis, was disillusioned with liberalism and the consequent relativism which created a value-free hedonism in the American society. Curtis traces the development of neo conservative ideas (refer to NeoCon Duet) to Strauss. Straussian Harvey C Mansfield, who would lead the likes of neoconservatives Irving Kristol, one of Strauss's students Paul Wolfowitz, are a few of those influenced by Strauss's controversial political ideas. The gist of his ideas, if I understood it correctly, was that liberalism produced authoritarainism; this thought naturally led, as some accuse, to imperialist militarism and Christian fundamentalism as alternatives. Dangerous!



Well, Curtis had a knack for connecting the two together. It fascinated and frightened me (It gives you, if you are a religious Chrisitian or a Muslim, this creepy feeling that you are next in line to becoming a terrorist) – to watch the power of logic, the power of religious thought – both good in themselves – to be perverted enough to bring the world to where it is now: the neoconservatives in power in the US and the Islamists in the Arab world – both now party to the violence in Iraq and elsewhere.


Imagine all this from an author (Qutb) and a professor (Strauss)!

Imagine: There are 1000 events happening in the world today. What all would come into the newspapers? Who decides these are IMPORTANT? Are you reading what actually matters or just what CERTAIN people think matters?

Media is complex and operates on:

-gatekeeping
-framing (Walter Lippman)
-propaganda model (by Noam Chomsky)

Gatekeeping: Gatekeeping theory, at its most basic level, is the idea that there is selectivity in the process of determining what news stories are published or broadcast. A major point of the theory, as developed by psychologist Kurt Lewin, is that there are forces that can either inhibit or aid the flow of news items through the "gates" (Shoemaker, 1996).

A famous quote is: You cannot control what the public think, but you can control what the public think about.

Frames, frames!

Every reporter or every newspaper will 'frame' an issue in a certain way.
This affects us in various ways: for eg, the minute someone talks to you about Al-Qaeda, you think in your mind 'terrorists'.

This is because most newspapers would automatically talk of Al-Qaeda as 'terrorists'. That is framing (source: Walter Lippman). It creates a 'picture in our heads' (stereotype) about Al-Qaeda. You have to question whether this ASSUMPTION reflects reality. If so, why? Do not swallow these assumptions.

Third is Noam Chomsky's propaganda model:

The idea is simple: big newspapers and broadcasters belong to business corporates and automatically do things that favour their owners and advertisers as well as people in power. It is reflected in what is reported and also how it is reported. For eg, CNBC, MSNBC (US) are owned by General Motors, a company which manufactures weapons for the military!! Imagine the news coming out of that.

Also, Chomsky suggests that journalists tend to listen like lil lambs to people in power (such as government officials). Journalists ARE one of the most power hungry people on earth (my experience) and love the attention they get from people in power (Quote: Robert Fisk). So most news reports are filled with what government officials think, feel, will do, etc. (eg: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6346901.stm
Is quoting government officials and press conferences the right way to report? Doesn't such a preoccupation with press conferences draw an incomplete picture of reality.... a reality where common people's voices should be heard?